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Create wayfinding excellence with innovative signs, walking maps and directional signs
Is your business difficult to navigate? Make your guest experience easier with wayfinding signs. Directional signs provide clear and concise instructions for confusing office hallways, hospital corridors, busy parking lots and large campuses.
Wayfinding is a universal need. From the moment someone arrives at your place of business, until the moment they leave, directional signs and graphics have the ability to make or break a visitor's experience. Effective wayfinding signage helps create a more productive, organized navigation experience, getting people where they want to go quickly and safely.
Use Wayfinders to Navigate with Ease
Have you ever been in a place where it’s difficult to find your way around? It’s frustrating to say the least, and for customers, patients, visitors or vendors, it can mean an unpleasant experience.
How Wayfinding Signs Help Your Location
Wayfinding signs help people better locate buildings, offices and departments within any setting. These designs are informative and attractive for both indoor and outdoor use and include other types of directional signage, such as parking signs, parking lot cashiering, directional arrows for entrance/exit and restroom signs. Whether it’s the lobby of an office building or a university campus, directional signage solutions will guide visitors with ease while providing accessibility with style.
Improve traffic flow
Improve the functionality of existing buildings
Create temporary solutions during construction
Maintain security and procedures such as vendor check-ins
Wayfinding signage can be used indoors and outdoors in, on and around corporate buildings, manufacturing facilities, hospitals, retail locations, campus facilities and construction sites. Any place people gather or visit, wayfinding helps inform people; it can also be used to improve the functionality of existing buildings.
Directional signs are most often found at:
Construction Sites
Shopping centers
Office buildings
Hospitals
Apartments
Event venues
Retail stores
There are quite a few ways in which you can help your customers find their way around your property. Building and area directories, colorful maps and pictograms are other great options. The possibilities are truly endless.
How to Create an Effective Wayfinding Signs System
Effective wayfinding signage helps create a better experience for vendors, customers and visitors. They want to get where they’re going quickly whether in a car or on foot. Keep these recommendations in mind when evaluating your directional signs.
Watch: Consider Effective Wayfinders for Your Next Outdoor Event
Outdoor events present challenges and opportunities for unique signage solutions. Whether its festivals, races, concerts, ceremonies or even parades, having multiple outdoor wayfinding signs can help your visitors better navigate parking, ticketing and more.
Keep it Simple
Focus on the most important information in a clear and concise fashion. If you need to convey more information than what comfortably fits on your directional signs, digital signs can help. From digital displays tointeractive maps, digital signs allow message flexibility and can easily inform employees of meeting room changes, direct guests who are uncertain to the proper elevator, or display a floor plan to hurried shoppers looking for a particular location. Digital wayfinding signs can also feature engaging content about your company or brand in the process.
User Friendly: Use clear, easy-to-read fonts and universal symbols
Easy to Read: Stick to simple language that anyone can understand at a glance
Universal Fonts: Use the same colors and styles throughout your space to help people easily recognize the signs
Location is Key
Place wayfinding signs and graphics where they are most likely to be useful, especially in high-traffic areas where there is more than one way to go. Strategic placement is important so make sure you’ve walked through your facility and identified your needs. For large campuses and organizations with multiple buildings such as schools or hospitals, consider color-coding by department and utilizing easy-to-read map displays. To meet different audiences where they are, symbols and pictograms are also helpful to bridge any potential language barriers.
Strategic Placement: Put signs where people naturally look, such as eye level or overhead in high-traffic areas
Make Visible: Make sure they’re visible from a distance to guide people before they reach decision points
High Traffic: Use directional signs with arrows near intersections
Prioritize: Incorporate location signs to clearly label rooms and landmarks
Choose the Right Type of Signs
Think about your customer experience. What do visitors need to know? What problem are you solving with a directional sign? Working with a trusted sign professional can help you solve for some of these identified pain points and make workflow or traffic flow easier to navigate.
Directional Arrows: Use arrows and straightforward instructions to guide visitors.
Inclusion: Include required ADA signs(Braille) in your signage plan.
Make it Clear: Clearly label rooms and important areas
Safety First: Ensure signs are in place to meet safety regulations.
Incorporate New Technology
Consider all the ways your customers interact with your signage including cell phones. From large blank walls and office windows, to breakroom floors and even elevator doors, take advantage of the architectural features in your building when planning out your wayfinding elements and incorporate new technology such as digital signage displays and QR codes. Regardless of how small or large the space, directional signs and graphics can be seamlessly incorporated into the decor.
Digital Signs: Add solar-powered kiosks that provide interactive maps and real-time updates
Cell Phones: Include QR codes that link to maps or directions or sign-in options for smartphone users
Extend Your Brand
When designing wayfinding signs, keep the audience and the environment in mind to ensure success in guiding people where they need to go. That doesn’t mean your signs and graphics should be stale. Integrate the colors, fonts and designs that represent your organization’s brand to make sure that the signs do their job with visual consistency to reinforce your organization’s branding. Consider rebranding existing wayfinding signage to reinforce your brand and to update weather damaged signage.
Revisit Sign Locations: Check your signs and ensure they’re up-to-date and effective
Integrate Your Brand: Incorporate colors, logos and fonts into the wayfinding design to reinforce brand identity throughout the space
Brand Messaging: If appropriate, include brand messaging or taglines to enhance the visitor experience and reinforce your brand’s values
Show Your Guests the Way With Directional Signs
Wayfinding is simple. It all comes down to fulfilling a simple and basic need we all have: getting where we need to go. Make Your Statement and make it easier with these directional sign tips and improve satisfaction, safety, and efficiency—all while looking great in the process.
Partner with FASTSIGNS on Your Next Wayfinding Project
Make Wayfinding easier by partnering with the trusted sign professionals at FASTSIGNS. Whether you need wayfinding signage to direct your visitors to your location or to a particular area of your building, help people know how to exit a location or where to go to seek attention in emergency situations, FASTSIGNS can integrate wayfinding designs to help achieve your goals of keeping visitors and staff informed.